Urticating Hairs

Urticating hairs are the primary defense mechanism for New World Tarantulas. They grow on the abdomen or opisthosoma and are easily dislodged when the irate T rubs one or more of his back legs over the hairs, flicking or kicking them into the air. Three things can happen at this point.

1.) You can get the hairs on your skin, where they dig in with their barb-like tips, which can leave you with a very itchy bumps or even a rash that can plague you for hours, days, or even a week or more.

2.) You can breathe these hairs in, in which case you can be left coughing and hacking as if you'd swallowed food down the wrong pipe, and generally feeling as if you'd scrubbed your throat with sandpaper.

3.) Or you can get one or more of these hairs in your eyes. Let me tell you, this is not fun. It happened to me on New Year's Eve 2005. That morning, I irritated one of my Green Bottle Blues when I fed and watered it. I know, I know--I'm a heartless beast. This is what it looked like.



Not only is the eye red and puffy, but it won't stop running and neither will my nose. Not the prettiest image, but there it is nonetheless. It felt as if I had an eyelash or speck of dust under my eyelid, rubbing on my cornea. Along with the irritation, my eye began to burn a little. Like I'd stayed up too late, but when I blinked, it felt as if the inside of my eyelid was made of sandpaper.

Now, I have fought not to rub and make it worse. In fact, I'm not even touching my eye to wipe the water away. I did try to flush out the hair, first with water and then with Visine. My husband, trying to be helpful, went to the local Walmart and bought an eye washing kit. Which I then used. And which I then had an allergic reaction to. At first I didn't realize the reaction was due to the eyewashing kit. I thought it was due to the hair. So I kept using the kit, until there I was, in so much burning pain that I couldn't get my eye to open at all. At that point, I went to the hospital emergency room.

You know, you meet the most interesting people in emergency rooms. There was me, a sickly and sniffling lady by the TV, and then there was the Broken Limb Club. There was a homeless guy with a broken ankle, who had called 9-1-1 for an ambulance, was then arrested by the first policeman to arrive on the scene, who instantly surmised that because the guy was upright instead of flat on the ground that he must have placed a phony call. He then wrestled the poor guy to the ground, handcuffed him and was in the process of wrestling the guy's boot off his leg when the EMT's arrived. He was on the phone to a lawyer when I sat down next to him, his leg propped up on another chair, swollen three times larger than its twin, and the most hideous black and blue color I've ever seen. The lawsuit will be pending shortly, I'm sure.

Then there were three other broken and/or sprained legs from three completely unrelated incidents, all guys who had attempted to remove their Christmas lights and fallen off their roofs. The nurses were cracking 'Tis the Season' jokes. Personally, I think anyone who removes their Christmas lights before the first of January deserves to have their leg broken.

And then there was the unfortunate snow-boarding accident. He sat in a wheelchair with two broken ankles, both wrapped in cardboard, carpet padding and duct tape (so many uses). He was there with his two sons, one 7 and one 9, and all three were laughing about how fast their dad had been going, tumbling head over board down that mountain. Next to them, was a guy with a busted arm and another with a hurt knee--they were the two poor souls that had stopped the first guy's head-on tumble down the mountain. Mostly because he'd crashed into them. They were also laughingly commisserating with him, as only men can do, because, in their words, it had been a "truly wicked wipeout, dude."

So, there I was, surrounded by testosterone-induced injuries, trying not to look like I was crying and really trying hard not to get caught laughing at the guy in the wheelchair (major no-no). It's just not politic to laugh at someone with two broken legs, not even when they're saying, "Yeah, I was going downhill on my head, and I suddenly realized I really didn't want to be there."

It was right about then that I felt a tiny hand sympathetically cover my own. I look down, and here is that guy's 7 year old son, looking up at me with these big, solemn blue eyes. In a voice much too serious for his tender years, he asked, "Did you lose someone dear to you?"

Apparently I wasn't doing very well at concealing my watering tears. "No, honey," I said. "My spider flicked his hair into my eye."

That 7 year old went from somber to ecstatic in half a blink. "You have a spider?!"

"Yes, I do."

At which point the father said, "Son, come away and let that poor woman alone."

The boy ignored him. Grabbing hold of my arm with both hands, grinning from ear to ear, he gushed, "What kind of spider?"

"I have tarantulas."

"More than one?!"

"Yes, I have one hundred and ten."

"That is so cool! I've wanted a tarantula for my whole, entire life! But my dad won't let me have one because they're too dangerous."

I'm going to hell, I just know it. I could see it in that guy's eyes as I leaned over and told his kid, "Tell him a tarantula won't break your legs."

Long story short (too late, I know), this is what they do for you at the hospital when you get a tarantula's hair in your eye:

They gave me a numbing eye drop that stung like crazy right up until it started to work. I then had to put my face in one of those Eye Doctor's machines that magnify your eye and allow them to look inside the cornea. At which point, the doctor exclaimed, "Ooo! You have a hair in your eye! I've never seen one like that before."

He tried to get it out with a Q-tip. When that failed, he tried to get it out with a needle. And when that failed, he then called up to the eye surgeon on duty, who informed him that the hair could not be removed. I was going to have to wait for it to dissolve and hope it didn't become infected. I was given a tetanus shot, a prescription for painkillers, eyedrop antibiotics and eyedrop steriods (I have no idea what for). I have to see an eye specialist every two days to make sure they catch any consequential infection before it has a chance to become serious. And that's it. Now you know what to expect. If I end up with an infection, I'll be sure to post it here.